Divx support for Xbox 360 - fall update

[tomos]

according to dailytech (http://www.dailytech.com/Xbox+360+Fall+Update+Official+Details+Revealed+Adds+DivX+Support/article9850.htm).

No matroska though :(

[Hardwax]

More info taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-video-playback-faq.aspx

Xbox 360 supports the following for AVI:
· File Extensions: .avi, .divx
· Containers: AVI
· Video Profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2, Simple & Advanced Simple Profile
· Video Bitrate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 x 720 at 30fps. See question number 11 for more information.
· Audio Profiles: Dolby® Digital 2 channel and 5.1 channel, MP3
· Audio Max Bitrate: No restrictions. See question number 11 for more information.

Xbox 360 supports the following for H.264:
· File Extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov
· Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
· Video Profiles: Baseline, main, and high (up to Level 4.1) profiles.
· Video Bitrate: 10 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 x 1080 at 30fps. See question number 11 for more information.
· Audio Profiles: 2 channel AAC low complexity (LC)
· Audio Max Bitrate: No restrictions. See question number 11 for more information.

Xbox 360 supports the following for MPEG-4:
· File Extensions: .mp4, .m4v, .mp4v, .mov
· Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
· Video Profiles: Simple & **Advanced Simple Profile
· Video Bitrate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 x 720 at 30fps. See question number 11 for more information.
· Audio Profiles: 2 channel AAC low complexity (LC)
· Audio Max Bitrate: No restrictions. See question number 11 for more information.

Q11. What is the "real" max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second that you support for all the different formats?
Xbox 360 does not specifically block video from playing based on a maximum bit rate, resolution, or frames per second. The maximums listed above for each codec are what we have tested for various video playback sources. Higher rated content will not be blocked, but playback may be less then optimal. Use higher bitrates at your own risk.

It seems subtitle support could be zero/iffy.

Is automen the quickest/easiest way to convert from mkv to avi without re-encoding the video ?

[ccc1005]

Wonder why they only have divx up to 720 and not 1080 like MP4 and WMV...

[Shakey_Jake33]

Those are the optimal recommended settings, they're not hard capped.

[Ronin-7]

Thread here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132292) too - the update is now out and so far everything in XviD I have is worked.

[BitBasher]

I have a 1280x720 25fps 62 minute DIVX-encoded video I tried on the 360. It plays but it gets choppy/drops frames on more complex scenes (moving/panning).

I suspect that this might be due to the fact I created the video using a fixed quality setting of Q 3.0. The resulting video is just shy of 2GB (about 178K of that is audio). If I understand Q settings correctly, it tries to maintain a consistent quality by varying the bitrate. On complex scenes I guess the bitrate could spike quite high and may be > the MS cap of 5Mbps.

I'm re-encoding the video now using a 2-pass setting with a fixed bitrate of 4000Kbps (which is < the 5Mbps). I'll try this one out and see if it plays any better.

If the 4Mbps video plays solid without frame drops, then it would indicate that Q settings for the xbox 360 are not necessarily a good choice. Seems to me that 5Mbps is a bit low considering the available horsepower in the 360. Hmmm.

[BitBasher]

UPDATE: I did a test with the 4000Kbps video and I made two versions of it, one with AC3 audio and one with MP3 audio. The AC3 audio version plays jerky, the MP3 audio version plays butter smooth. The video stream is identical.

So it appears that MS didn't get the rate controller quite right for HDEF (1280x720@25fps) Divx video that contains AC3 audio - it tends to play with quite a lot of jitter. It doesn't seem that it's out-and-out dropping frames but rather, the frame rate seems irratic - like it's not pacing the video at a smooth 25fps but it bunched them together and then a few get spread apart. A scene with a nice pan of a mountain side is very hard to watch as it goes by all jittery.

Funny too as my xbox 360 is setup to spit out AC3 audio on the optical cable - in theory the xbox 360 doesn't need to spend any CPU time processing it (that's done by my external AC3 amp).

So if you have HDEF DIVX video with AC3 audio you may not get very good results. If the audio is MP3 then it seems rock solid. It's sad as you'd think stuff like this should be WELL TESTED. The only other thing I can think of is that I have an ELITE xbox 360 - maybe this flavor of the xbox DOES have to spend a lot of CPU time encoding the AC3 audio for the HDMI port (even though I'm not using it). Currently, I don't have access to another non-elite xbox 360 to test this theory out.

I'll continue testing a few other videos and I'm going to retry my original Q3.0 video but with an MP3 audio stream just to see if that works well.